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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Delgado Helleseter, Miguel (California State University, Channel Islands); Kuhn, Peter J. (University of California, Santa Barbara); Shen, Kailing (Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | When permitted by law, employers sometimes state the preferred age and sex of their employees in job ads. We study this practice using data from one Mexican and three Chinese job boards, showing that it is widely used to request both genders and is especially prevalent in jobs with low skill requirements. For example, on the job board serving less-skilled production and service workers in China, 72 percent of ads specified a preferred gender, and 77 percent listed both a minimum and maximum age. We also document a new stylized fact we call the age twist in gender profiling: firms' explicit gender requests shift dramatically away from women and towards men when firms are seeking older (as opposed to younger) workers. While some of this twist can be attributed to employers' age-dependent requests for (female) beauty and (male) leadership, the timing of the shift suggests that young women's movement into childbearing also plays a role. |
| Keywords: | gender, discrimination, age, China, Mexico, Internet, beauty, search, recruiting, screening |
| JEL: | J16 J63 J71 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9891&r=lab |
| By: | Karabarbounis, Loukas (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis); Chodorow-Reich, Gabriel (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | By how much does an extension of unemployment benefits affect macroeconomic outcomes such as unemployment? Answering this question is challenging because U.S. law extends benefits for states experiencing high unemployment. We use data revisions to decompose the variation in the duration of benefits into the part coming from actual differences in economic conditions and the part coming from measurement error in the real-time data used to determine benefit extensions. Using only the variation coming from measurement error, we find that benefit extensions have a limited influence on state-level macroeconomic outcomes. We use our estimates to quantify the effects of the increase in the duration of benefits during the Great Recession and find that they increased the unemployment rate by at most 0.3 percentage point. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment insurance; Measurement error; Unemployment |
| JEL: | E24 E62 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2016–04–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmwp:733&r=lab |
| By: | Nancy L. Stokey |
| Abstract: | Technical change, even if it is limited in scope, can have employment, output, price and wage effects that ripple through the whole economy. This paper uses a flexible and tractable framework, with heterogeneous workers and technologies, and many tasks/goods, to analyze the general equilibrium effects of technical change for a limited set of tasks. Output increases and price falls for tasks that are directly affected. The effects on employment depend on the elasticity of substitution across tasks/goods. For high elasticities, employment expands to a group of more skilled workers. Hence for tasks farther up the technology ladder, employment falls, output declines, and prices and wages rise. For low elasticities, employment at affected tasks contracts among less skilled workers, as they shift to complementary tasks with unchanged technologies. In all cases, the output, price and wage changes are damped for more distant tasks, both above and below the affected group. |
| JEL: | D50 E24 O33 O40 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22176&r=lab |
| By: | Fernando E. Alvarez; Katarína Borovičková; Robert Shimer |
| Abstract: | We develop a dynamic model of transitions in and out of employment. A worker finds a job at an optimal stopping time, when a Brownian motion with drift hits a barrier. This implies that the duration of each worker's jobless spells has an inverse Gaussian distribution. We allow for arbitrary heterogeneity across workers in the parameters of this distribution and prove that the distribution of these parameters is identified from the duration of two spells. We use social security data for Austrian workers to estimate the model. We conclude that dynamic selection is a critical source of duration dependence. |
| JEL: | E24 J64 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22188&r=lab |
| By: | Guha, Brishti |
| Abstract: | I unify the following (1) men face paternity uncertainty while women do not face maternity uncertainty, (2) putative fathers and paternal kin care about true paternity, (3) paternity confidence is systematically lower in matrilocal cultures than in patrilocal ones, (4) inheritance tends to be patrilineal where paternity confidence is high and matrilineal where it is low, and (5) most societies with patrilineal inheritance were patrilocal while most societies with matrilineal inheritance were matrilocal. I explore the following related puzzles: (1) Why were patrilineal-patrilocal societies (PP) more sexually restrictive for women than matrilineal-matrilocal ones (MM)? (2) Why did the older generation in PP and MM societies play starkly different roles in sexual monitoring? (3) Why did most societies emerge as PP while a few became MM? (4) Can the correlation between inheritance and post-marital residence be explained without assuming the exogeneity of either? To answer these questions I look at the simultaneous determination of inheritance, residence, and levels of sexual monitoring/permissiveness. |
| Keywords: | Uncertain paternity; grandparents; incentives; patrilocality; inheritance; monitoring. |
| JEL: | D02 D82 J12 |
| Date: | 2016–04–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:70954&r=lab |
| By: | Roland G. Fryer, Jr |
| Abstract: | Starting in the 2013-2014 school year, I conducted a randomized field experiment in fifty traditional public elementary schools in Houston, Texas designed to test the potential productivity benefits of teacher specialization in schools. Treatment schools altered their schedules to have teachers specialize in a subset of subjects in which they have demonstrated relative strength (based on value-add measures and principal observations). The average impact of teacher specialization on student achievement is -0.042 standard deviations in math and -0.034 standard deviations in reading, per year. Students enrolled in special education and those with younger teachers demonstrated marked negative results. I argue that the results are consistent with a model in which the benefits of specialization driven by sorting teachers into a subset of subjects based on comparative advantage is outweighed by inefficient pedagogy due to having fewer interactions with each student. Consistent with this, specialized teachers report providing less attention to individual students (relative to non-specialized teachers), though other mechanisms are possible. |
| JEL: | D24 I20 J0 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22205&r=lab |
| By: | Galasso, Vincenzo; Nannicini, Tommaso |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the differential response of male and female voters to compet-itive persuasion in political campaigns. We implemented a survey experiment during the (mixed gender) electoral race for mayor in Milan (2011), and a field experiment during the (same gender) electoral race for mayor in Cava de' Tirreni (2015). In both cases, a sample of eligible voters was randomly divided into three groups. Two were exposed to either a positive or a negative campaign by one of the opponents. The third-control-group received no electoral information. In Milan, the campaigns were administered online and consisted of a bundle of advertising tools (videos, texts, slogans). In Cava de' Tirreni, we implemented a large scale door-to-door campaign in collaboration with one of the candidates, randomizing positive vs. negative messages. In both experiments, stark gender differences emerge. Females vote more for the opponent and less for the incumbent when they are exposed to the opponent's positive campaign. Exactly the opposite occurs for males. These gender differences cannot be accounted for by gender identification with the candidate, ideology, or other observable attributes of the voters. |
| Keywords: | competitive persuasion.; gender di erences; political campaigns; randomized controlled trials |
| JEL: | D72 J16 M37 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11238&r=lab |
| By: | Janet Currie; Hannes Schwandt |
| Abstract: | Analysts who have concluded that inequality in life expectancy is increasing have generally focused on life expectancy at age 40 to 50. However, we show that among infants, children, and young adults, mortality has been falling more quickly in poorer areas with the result that inequality in mortality has fallen substantially over time. This is an important result given the growing literature showing that good health in childhood predicts better health in adulthood and suggests that today’s children are likely to face considerably less inequality in mortality as they age than current adults. We also show that there have been stunning declines in mortality rates for African-Americans between 1990 and 2010, especially for black men. The fact that inequality in mortality has been moving in opposite directions for the young and the old, as well as for some segments of the African-American and non-African-American populations argues against a single driver of trends in mortality inequality, such as rising income inequality. Rather, there are likely to be multiple specific causes affecting different segments of the population. |
| JEL: | J11 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22199&r=lab |